chapter 25
Birds chirping. Bad taste in my mouth. I grabbed my head. Too much light. I winced and sat up. Where was I?
Then my hand brushed something hard. I glanced down.
I was on my bed, in my room. I licked my lips and picked up the small tape recorder. There was a note tapped to the front with one word scribbled on it: listen.
It was signed G.M.
I clenched my jaw until my molars ached. Instinctively I knew whatever this was, I wouldn’t like it. But curiosity... I clicked play.
“I don’t give a bloody hell what ye have to do to bring Kemen to that club, ye do it.”
Sweat beaded on my brow. The voice was Grace.
“Let me worry about Pandora, stupid chit believes anything I tell her. She sucks up me crumbs of love like a starving child. She is utterly blinded to me. Do not worry about her.”
I gasped, hyperventilating, unable to believe my ears. It hadn’t been a dream. “Oh God.” I swallowed the bile.
“I don’t effin' care how ye make it happen, ye just make it happen. She believes the neph is rogue, she’ll kill him, trust me on that.”
I covered my mouth with my hand.
“Aye, she’s got the ring.”
I started shaking and fisted my hand into the blanket.
Her terrible laughter pelted through the tiny speaker. “If she is the woman of prophecy, we’ll know tonight. If not she’s expendable.”
The loud buzz of static filled the room. The recording stopped.
I shoved my hand into my mouth to keep from screaming and ran to the bathroom. I turned on the shower to the coldest setting. Stripped off my clothes and sat down, swinging the curtains shut. I hugged my legs to my chest as I rocked. The water was like shards of ice as it touched my skin.
A black bottomless pit of raw and awful grief welled up inside me. Sounds spilled through the room. Hopeless, empty moans.
Visions of that night filled my head with the awful agony of truth.
“Not a dream. Not a dream.” I couldn’t seem to say anything else. My brain was stuck in one gear, in that awful lonely place.
I groaned, growing louder and louder. Heat crept into my eyes. “Kemen.” My voice was reed thin. I swallowed hard. My vision grew blurry.
The dark void stretched long fingers throughout every part of me. It started in the pit of my stomach, ran up my arms and down my legs and then finally filled my head. It ate me like a slow leeching cancer. I rocked faster.
“Kemen. Kemen. Kemen!” I screamed the last, the sound of it more like a mournful wail. I threw myself forward and shook as sobs wracked my body.
For the first time in my life, I cried.
I don’t know how long I stayed that way, screaming and mumbling, drowning in her betrayal and the anguish of his loss before I smelled sulfur.
“Pandora!” Luc threw back my curtains.
I shook my head and sobbed. “Oh my God, Luc, oh my God, I killed him. Oh my God.”
He grabbed me, hugged me to his body. I clutched his shirt. “She lied to me. She lied to us. Oh God,” I moaned.
Then I was on my bed. He was hugging me, fingers digging into my back. I didn’t let him go, just squeezed harder. His hands were on my face. He wiped away the tears, but still more came.
“I killed him, Luc. She made me kill him.”
“Dora, ssh.” He patted my face. “Kemen was rogue.”
“No,” I yelled and hugged my arms to my chest. “She lied. She lied. It was LCD. He killed LCD, not children. She set us up. Play it.” I pointed to the recorder, then covered my eyes with my hands and rocked back and forth.
I hiccupped, great sobbing stuttering breaths. Luc played the recording several more times, seeming as shocked as I’d been. But with each playback his anger grew and morphed. He looked at me.
Luc grabbed me by the back of my head. “She would have killed you. I’ll kill her,” he snarled, his anger stirring mine. “I’ll tear her limb from limb.”
“No.” I slammed my hand on his chest. “She’s mine. She betrayed me, betrayed my trust. She’s my kill.”
A muscle worked furiously in his jaw.
“Luc, she’s mine. Do you hear me? Mine.” I brooked no argument, I would take none. Yes, Grace had betrayed us all, but she’d used me to do it.
He glanced away, eyes a dangerous shade of purple. I hugged his neck and kissed his cheek. His fingers dug into my waist. Mint of his warm breath fanning my neck, washed my skin with goose flesh.
I was so cold inside, so empty. I needed his warmth. His touch. Something to let me know I was still alive even though every beat of my heart made me feel I was slowly dying.
He nuzzled my neck. “She nearly killed you, Dora.”
I trembled. His strong hands kneaded the stiff muscles in my back. I groaned and turned into him, pressing myself against his hard chest, greedily sucking up his warmth.
“I’m so cold,” I stuttered, squeezing his neck harder.
He kissed my cheek. Then my nose. My closed eyelids. I moaned and he groaned. His lips touched mine.
I kissed him back. But the kiss was more than sex, or desire. It was the breath of life, of the knowledge that I was alive. Not whole. Not the same. But I lived.
My hands were frantic as I ripped his clothes off. He laid me down on the bed, mumbling incoherent words I couldn’t understand. Then he was inside me.
I arched my back and for a second there wasn’t pain—or death, or anger, bitterness, or even the self-loathing of taking a life that mattered more to me than my own—there was only now and the pleasure Luc’s body could bring.
His desire swept through me, raced down my skin with its fiery brushstroke, shifting my body into his Blonde bombshell. I wrapped my legs around his waist, matching his rhythm and groaning as I reached the peak of the spiral. Then I cried out, as the orgasm violently ripped through me. And for one glorious moment I forgot it all.
Lust, who’d grown strangely dormant, roared to life, flexing her muscle. She stretched inside me and filled me up. She fed off Luc’s desire, purring with satisfaction. But there was something else now, something dark, and small, and twisted, and it too stirred.
And with it, I came crashing back down to reality. My heart sped; the foreign darkness was a sour taste in my mind.
I grimaced, wanting to peel it off me. Fling it away. Luc stirred, sensing my agitation. He looked down at me. “Pandora?”
I shook my head and slid out from under him. I wrapped my arms around my thighs and rested my head on my knees.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, caressing my calf with his fingers.
I stared at the wall in front of me remembering last night and the furry demon hopping toward me.
“I went to Hell, Luc.” I glanced at him.
It was as if he’d become a wall of living stone. There was no betraying movement to hint that he’d even heard me. Finally he asked, “How?” His voice was flat, emotionless. As if we talked of the weather or things that didn’t matter.
“The ring.” I gave a bitter laugh. “She played me for a fool the whole time. The ring was spelled. It was never meant to kill him, it was meant to kill me.”
He clenched his jaw and I knew what he was thinking, all the times he’d told me to use it on Billy. Guilt etched a line between his brows.
“Don’t blame yourself,” I said.
“No.” He punctuated the word with a shake of his head. “I told you to use that a million times. I was so angry with you, Pandora. So angry that you kept choosing that priest over your safety. If I hadn’t...”
“No.” I placed my finger over his lip. “I would have used it anyway. At some point I would have gotten brave enough to use it. I trusted her, Luc. The whole time I doubted everybody else, even you at times, but never really her. I’d question things, things she said or did, but I never believed it, not with her. I just kept thinking I was seeing things wrong. That the day her house felt ice cold it was me having a panic attack. Me trying to see ghosts where there were none, because she was Grace. She was my ally, my friend. She would never betray me. She loved me.” I snorted, disgust dripped off my tongue. “She was right, I sucked it all up and always came begging for more.”
The pain of losing Kemen began to churn with a new thread of emotion inside my belly. Betrayal.
“What I can’t understand,” he said, rubbing his jaw as if trying to scrape the skin off, “is how perfect this worked out. It was as if they’d orchestrated this whole thing.”
“The molestation ring.” I spat, repulsed by the new lows Grace had sunk to. “She set that up. She must have. It’s the only thing that makes sense. I wouldn’t have risked my life for anything else but innocent kids. She knew that.”
He shook his head. “You honestly believe she fronted that entire thing? Those were real kids. You saw them.”
Luc was still hanging on to the same thread I’d tried so hard to keep where Grace was concerned. Because the thought of her betraying us had seemed crazy, so far beyond the realm of possibility that it was unacceptable to even allow our minds to go there. But I was done being willfully ignorant. She’d tried to pit me against everybody, even Luc.
“Yeah, but only to make it more authentic. Casualties didn’t matter to her, this was never about cracking down on a vampire run molestation slash Molech worshipping ring. You and I both know the vamps were never smart enough, never organized enough to pull off something like that. The entire thing was a set up. To get me. She used my one weakness against me, the one thing I’d cross heaven and hell to try and save. Children. She took them there that first night, made me feel something, want to be the hero. But mixed in with those kids were LCD and somehow Kemen was smart enough to figure that out. That’s why he went there, to kill them, I just wish to God he would have told somebody. The whole damn thing was a set up.”
My fingers were curled into tight balls by my side, the inside of my body so full of heat and fury that if I could have spit fire I’d be burning the place down.
“But how?” He grabbed the hairs on the side of his head and gave a hard tug. “You could have used that ring at any point, but you didn’t. Instead you waited until the night you saw Kem.”
My stomach dipped. “I can hardly think clearly right now. I’m so upset.” My voice broke. I waited until I could trust myself to speak without crying again. “When I think about it, Luc, I’m not sure they cared whether I killed Kemen or not. I think all of this was about me. I think if I hadn’t told Grace about my priest problem she would have found some other reason for giving me the talisman, it just so happens I provided her with the perfect excuse.”
“Fine, she was after you. That’s obvious in hindsight. But there’s more to this.” He shook his head. “On the tape she seemed as interested in the priest as she was in you. Why?”
I shrugged. None of this made sense to me.
“What prophecy was she talking about? You survived, Pandora.” His blue eyes were twin pools of misery and confusion. “Are you that woman? Is this only the beginning? What else is gonna happen?”
I twisted my lips. “I wish I knew.”
We sat wrapped in silence, each of us deep in our thoughts. I don’t know how much time passed, but when next I looked, sunlight had crept long golden fingers through my room chasing back the shadow of early morning.
I jerked, surprised when I felt his hand trace the line of my jaw. “How did you get back home, Pandora? I searched the woods. I searched the club. Dora, how did you come back?”
The Gray Man. I closed my eyes, remembering his strong arms. The white light. The screams of the damned behind us. Who was he? Who could enter Hell and not be harmed by it?
Only demons. And angels.
But demons don’t do white light. And if the Gray Man was an angel, he was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
I hung my head. “I prayed. I was dying. Wrath had me thralled.”
His thumb traced the seam of my lips. “Did you escape on your own?”
“No.”
His mouth turned down. “Who brought you back?”
Even though I was no longer in Hell, thinking about it filled me with dread. I shivered and looked at my hands remembering the bones they’d been. Remembering that last lingering look Billy had thrown me. My heart ached, my temples hurt.
“I don’t know," I finally whispered after a while. I wish I did, but I don’t know.”
The Gray Man, whatever he was, was not an angel. He couldn’t be. So what was he?
“Friend or foe?” Luc asked.
I threw up my hands.
“So the order’s out to kill you. Someone rescued you, but you don’t know who. Where’s the priest?”
I glanced at him. My heart lurched at the mere mention of Billy. Even now, I cared. Had he actually been there to kill me as I'd initially thought? I’d seen the violence in his eyes, his raised sword. And yet, he'd thrown himself atop me to keep from taking those last fateful steps toward Wrath.
“Chaos stabbed him,” I said in monotone.
“Is he dead?”
I bit my bottom lip to keep from betraying the slight tremor coursing through it. “Probably.” Simply admitting that hurt so much I felt like I couldn't catch a breath.
I quickly switched topics. “What happened to the worshippers?” Now it was Luc’s turn to look uneasy.
He turned and dropped his head into his hand. “When you disappeared...I lost it.”
I rubbed his back.
He grabbed my hand and placed it against his chest. “I killed anybody who crossed my path.”
“The kids?” I managed to squeeze out.
“Some died, Dora.”
I tried to pull my hand away.
“No.” He grabbed me back. “Not by me. I didn’t touch them. I swear.”
I could read the sincerity in his panic stricken gaze. I’ve seen Luc lose himself to the monster before and for the first time in my life I could now say I have too. I frowned.
“Please tell me you believe me.” He shook me softly.
I’d lost my will to my demon because of blind rage, thinking I’d seen Kemen killing children. Losing all rational thought because of that. Luc must have felt something similar when he’d nearly killed me.
I cupped his chin and gave him a sad smile. Even in my rage I’d directed my anger solely at Kemen. I know I would never have touched the children. Neither would he.
“I believe you, Luc.”
His eyes closed and his shoulders sagged with relief.
“What happened to the rest of the LCD?”
Haunted blue eyes held my own. “They ran. I followed and killed the ones I caught. Dumped them in the streets.” He clutched my fingers, holding them to his lips. “Dozens, Pandora. I couldn’t stop.”
I scooted near him, laying my head on his shoulder.
“When I saw you with Kem, I figured he was our rogue. I called Bubba and Vyx on my cell. Then it was all madness, you disappeared and I went feral.” Muscles in his jaw flexed. “They found me in the streets. Bubba knocked me out, dragged me home.”
“Oh my gosh, Luc, all those bodies,” I murmured, “the police will find them. How can we explain that away?”
“Vyx helped...” His eyes flicked to my face then down at the carpet, “calm me.”
I knew what he meant. I touched his cheek and let him read the truth in my face. It didn’t matter. I’d have done the same.
He clipped his head. “I went out again this morning to look for you, retraced my steps.” He tucked a blonde strand of hair behind my ear. “The bodies were gone. All of ‘em. Humans and Vamp.”
“What?” Confused, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What happened to the kids?”
“They were there. The ones that survived were still huddled together in the large cage. They didn’t even try to leave, Dora.”
“Did you call the cops?”
He nodded. “They’re down there now. It’s all over the news.”
I rubbed my temples. “None of this makes sense to me. None of it. Why the kids? Why involve the vamps?” I rolled my neck from side to side, trying to work out the knot at the base of my skull. “Was this even about me?”
“Why would you ask that? Of course it was? Grace tried to kill you.”
I scooted off the bed and started pacing back and forth. Something about all of this kept nagging at me. “But why me? What makes me special? She didn’t seem to care if I lived or died, unless I was part of the prophecy. No.” I scratched my head. “This is bigger than vamps, and I suspect this new zombie infestation plays a part in all of this.”
He stood and ran his hand down his face. “I have a sick feeling that this is just the beginning.” He paused, studied me for a second and then licked his lips.
I cocked my head. He was nervous about something. “What’s wrong, Luc?”
He squared his shoulders. “Bubba brought Kem home last night.”
Hearing that was like taking a punch to the gut. My mouth turned down.
“We’re gonna prepare the body and have a funeral.” He gripped my shoulder, then turned and left.
I sank onto my bed and stared with unseeing eyes out the window. I didn’t move. I sat until the sun disappeared behind the thicket of trees.
And as each minute, each hour ticked by I grew more and more upset. It gnawed away at me. Pestilence seemed to like the anger more than Lust. He goaded me, spurred me on.
Go kill her. He told me. Kill her. Look what she did to you. She doesn’t deserve to live.
My breathing grew heavy. I jumped to my feet, got dressed and ported. My booted feet pounded the deserted sidewalk of downtown. And with each step my rage mounted, twisted into an ugly, horrible thing.
I got to 666 Elm and snarled. I should have seen the clues. Trust no one.
I wrapped myself in glamour and ported inside. Silent, I moved up the stairs. The only sounds in the house were the constant tick tock of the wall clock. I maneuvered my way around the maze of boxes lining the upstairs hallway.
There were four doors, all closed. It was cold up here. Freezing. I turned to look at the closed door on my left. The hairs on my arm stood up. When I breathed steam curled from my lips.
Then suddenly it all made sense. Pestilence knew what I had not. The cold I’d felt the first night I’d visited Grace was a portal. A doorway between this realm and Hell.
She’d been the one slipping LCD into downtown. Grace had bought the home, not because she needed a soft bed to sleep on, but because she needed a safeguard for the gateway.
And now because of the presence of Pestilence within me, the proximity of the portal no longer affected me. Did this mean I was more demon now than human? Angrily I shoved that thought away. I’d worry about that some other day. Not now.
I narrowed my eyes. Hanging from one of the doors was a purple and teal mumu.
Pestilence smirked. Blood. Blood. He coo’d.
I licked my lips and pulled a knife out of my pocket. “Everywhere,” I trilled, finishing his song. He wanted blood and tonight I would grant his request.
I opened the door with the mumu and a long slow grin spread across my face. There she lay, in the middle of the bed, one hand flung over eyes, the other clutching a rosary.
I glided to the side of the bed. Blue liquid drops of moonlight kissed her temple and highlighted the gray strands of hair.
“You liar,” I hissed, loud enough that she should have woken up.
A gentle snore fell from parted lips.
“Wake up and face me,” I said through clenched teeth. I wouldn’t kill her like some coward in her sleep. I was going to stick the knife through her heart and make her watch while I did it.
“Wake up,” I yelled it this time, grabbed her shoulders and shook her violently. Her head lolled from side to side, but still her eyes didn’t open.
What was this? She was breathing. She was alive.
A crystalline pulse of power shivered down my spine. I twirled and saw a black blob of dancing shadow shape and form itself until it stood before me.
“Pandora,” the Gray Man said, and I knew what he’d done.
He’d placed her in a catatonic state.
“Why?” I screamed, throwing my knife to the ground. “How dare you steal my revenge?” Tears blinded my eyes, I swiped them away. “You show me that tape and expect me not to come? Stay out of my life.”
I was breathing so heavy I shook with it.
“There is the prophecy to learn. You cannot kill her. Not yet. She has to believe that she’s failed and you know nothing. You must continue to work with her.” The deep timbre of his voice shivered across my flesh.
“I could care less about some stupid prophecy. You think I owe you a thing just because you saved my life?”
He glided forward and as he moved the pressure in the room grew thick and heavy. It crushed me against the wall, so that it felt like unyielding hands pinning me by the waist. Paintings Grace hadn’t yet packed crashed down around us.
“You should care. Don’t delude yourself into thinking that this has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with you.” His words were vicious barbs.
I tried to fight back, force my will against his. But he was too strong. “I don’t care anymore. She can kill me. I don’t care.”
“No she can’t,” he growled, and again I saw a burning glow of amber burn bright within the hood. “I won’t let her kill you.”
I laughed and the sound was caustic to my ears. “For all I know you’re going to try to kill me too. Oh wait, you already tried once. Who are you?” I balled my hands into fists. “You’re no angel, I know that.”
I could feel his anger; it lifted the fine hairs on my arms and the back of my neck.
After a lengthy pause he finally said, “Who I am doesn’t matter. What I know does.”
“What do you know? Tell me. Did you know she was going to make me turn against one of mine? Did you know the order planned this whole charade? Just what do you know?”
“We must learn about the prophecy. You will help me.”
I chuckled. “Kill me, Gray Man. If you think threats will work, think again. I’m dead inside. I’ve got nothing left to lose.”
He moved closer, so close his faceless body hovered inches from mine. I stared into a yawning chasm of shadow and twin dots of burning light. The power emanating from him rolled through the house like thunder.
“If you think losing that boy is the worst it can get, then you’re sorely mistaken.” The gravel quality of his voice rubbed against my body like sandpaper.
My nostrils flared and what I felt then wasn’t hot anger, but the cold; the kind of cold anger that settles deep and burns brighter. “What do you mean?”
He stepped back and I gasped as the pressure against my body finally eased. I rubbed my aching hips.
“You’re smart. Figure it out.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, suppressing the urge to run over to Grace, straddle her and stab her through the heart until the hurt inside my own stopped.
I swiped up my knife and walked away, not bothering to look back at him.
There was only one person left in the world who’d I’d die for. And though it was only one, his was a life I would never gamble. It wasn’t worth it.
I ported back to the carnival. The machines had been taken down already. Aside from a few winking trailer lights, it was dark. A blood red moon hung heavy in the sky.
I kicked at a rock with the toe of my boot and watched it skip across the blades of grass.
I glanced at Luc’s trailer and looked away. I didn’t want to go there. I hugged my arms to my chest, never feeling as alone as I did right then. What was I gonna do?
“Pandora?” Vyxyn’s soft voice cut through my melancholy.
Her hair was powder blue and caught up in a short ponytail. She was dressed in a Hello Kitty tank and shorts sleep set. She looked ready for bed. I wondered if she’d been looking out her window waiting for my return.
“I know I always give you crap,” she said, “but mostly it was because I always thought you too weak.”
I snorted and glanced away. Like that was a shock.
She touched my shoulder. “I never thought you’d kill Kemen.” She said it with respect, and a touch of awe. As if she was seeing me for the first time.
“How dare you?” I slapped her hand away, lashing out at her with all my bottled frustration. “I loved him. I didn’t kill him for fun. Screw you.”
I shoved past her and ran with no destination in mind. In Vyx’s own way she’d tried to show me respect, make an apology and any other time I would have been able to understand that. But not now. Not while my heart still bled and grieved for a man I’d never see, never hold again.
I’d loved Kemen. He’d been family in every sense of the word. Blood or not, I’d loved him. Everybody else had put up with him. But to me, he’d been special. Perfect.
I stopped, suddenly realizing where I was headed. I stood in front of his silver bullet trailer. My hand trembled as I pushed open his door.
His clothes still lay in piles. Video games and equipment scattered all over the place. On the table sat the wire, it didn’t look like he’d even touched it after our talk yesterday.
Had it only been yesterday morning since I’d last seen his smiling face?
I walked over to one of the piles of clothes and grabbed a t-shirt, I pulled it on. It smelled like him. Deep and masculine, I breathed it in.
I still felt him. So alive. In this place. All around. Everywhere I looked, I saw him. It helped.
I moved to his bedroom. Lying on the carpet atop his pile of books was my guitar. I’d forgotten to take it home the other night.
I grabbed it and sat down cross-legged on the bed. I started tuning, tightening the metal strings until they rang clean and pure.
I plucked at the strings, following the melody where it led and I found myself back at the song I’d sang the night I’d first met the priest.
My voice cracked, and many times I had to stop. But I forced myself to finish it, not because I wanted to play the part of the martyr. No, I did this for one reason.
Because I couldn’t go to the funeral and this was my way of saying goodbye.
The last note hung in the air like a delicate strand of spider silk. I hugged the guitar to me and the last tear I would cry for Kemen tracked slowly down my cheek.
Grace had made the biggest mistake of her life screwing with me and someday she’d live to regret it.
“I love you, Sandman. I promise. I’ll make them all pay.”
Epilogue
Outside, shadow slinked. He gripped the base of the tree, watching her sing until the last vowel died on her tongue. He’d found her. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow; but someday he’d return.
This story was far from over.